Maybe it was that other song you sang

I don't like the term "earworm," but I agree that there needs to be a compound noun or at least a less unwieldy phrase for music stuck in one's head, otherwise it is very difficult to construct an elegant sentence about having four or five of them switch on and off in various combinations throughout the day. I run a near-constant internal soundtrack and one of the things my brain is wired for is allusion, so I'm not surprised that seeing a line quoted on my friendlist left me humming "You're the Top," or that my father's after-dinner search for his nuclear blast kill calculator stuck me (again) with "Werner von Braun," but none of that explains why I woke up with "Yesterday Is Here" and did a lot of my cooking to the persistent alternation of "Read About Love" and "The Shame of Going Back." There was a cameo appearance by "Midnight Feast" somewhere around the butternut squash biscuits, but it didn't last. Oh, yes, and "Ten Happy Fingers." All one verse of it. That can't have been a good sign.¹ Then again, I'm not sure I know any Thanksgiving songs beyond Brecht and Weill's astringent and unworshiping "Großer Dankchoral," so what else should have been in my head for the holiday? It was good; my brother and his wife came for dinner, Eric and Bob and Ron for dessert; there were no kitchen fires or accidental severance of digits, although there was a tricky moment with the Zwiebelkuchen and I am not repeating that recipe for braised greens. Some of the time I remembered to take photographs. I should have kept a list of the music.

1. I have just discovered there is a techno piece of the same name. It remixes dialogue from The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. It is also catchy. I'm doomed.

I saw the plum tree's leaves as red as fresh blood

And now it's raining, in a particularly thin, bitter, wintry way: as if to impress on all the Black Friday shoppers that there is absolutely nothing to be thankful for, especially the Christmas rush. The front of our house is plastered with winter moths, which it has been for the last three or four weeks; they flurry inside every time someone opens a door, after which they turn up in corners of the bathroom, stuck to the baseboards, patiently buffeting up against the white and blue and red LEDs of Orion. The lawn is still green, but the trees are leafless, blackly wet against the unraveling sky. The greyness of the clouds makes even the old fallen leaves look oddly dense with color, hammered down chestnut-colored over uneven turf; dry, day-lit, they will merely look leftover.

Below the cut are some photographs from yesterday, mostly of the mango pomegranate guacamole, which I decided to make after all. For those people within applicable geographic range, I can probably be induced to do so again.

( And I'm going to bake you a nice coconut cream pie. )